


The Engineer

by idlyfretting



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Avengers AU, BAMF Tony Stark, Captivity, Gen, Hurt Tony Stark, Kidnapping, POV Tony Stark, Post-Avengers (2012), References to Torture, Space Angst?, The Avengers (2012) - Freeform, Tony Stark-centric, What-If, but nothing too explicit, sort of...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-21
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:55:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8265059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idlyfretting/pseuds/idlyfretting
Summary: All Tony really wanted to do was go home. But space was huge, and dangerous, and it didn't make sense half the time. But he was smart, he could build his way out of anything, if only he could stop getting captured.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically an AU where Tony didn't make it back through the portal. Instead he floated around in space for a minute before getting picked up by some not-so-friendly people. I don't want to give too much away so I'll just leave it at that. 
> 
> I've never posted on here before, so be gentle, it's my first time.
> 
> I'll add more tags/warnings as I write more chapters. Not sure where this might end up. I have a vague idea of where I want it to go, but we'll see if it gets there.

Tony surfaced from unconsciousness as he was being moved. Two guards, or what he assumed were guards, were holding him up between them as they kept a steady pace toward some undeterminable point. He’d been blindfolded, of course. 

It was irritating but not unexpected. He needed to figure out where he was, not that looking around was likely to help. He was still struggling to identify different alien architectures and languages, not to mention alien races themselves. Seeing his surroundings wasn’t the best method for figuring out his location.

Hell, who was he kidding? It didn’t fucking matter where he was; he wasn’t on Earth. He hadn’t been for some time, and it didn’t really look like he would be any time soon. Figuring out what quadrant he was in, or what planet he’d stumbled onto wasn’t going to make getting home any easier. He’d spent, what… weeks, months, years? He’d lost track of time. The point is he’d spent too long already out in a universe that was far to large navigate, far too vast to pinpoint the very small, very protected planet he needed to get to. Somewhere, in the very dusty back rooms of his mind, he was grateful for the protection the Asgardians had afforded his home planet. It was likely what had kept it and its inhabitants safe for so long. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling very thankful at the moment because he COULDN’T FIND HIS OWN DAMN PLANET. His latest effort had landed him in the middle of a gang of alien bounty hunters and he couldn’t really figure out if he was angrier with them or himself. The speed at which they’d recognized him was slightly confusing, considering he was human and there weren’t exactly too many of those hanging around in this galaxy.

The realization that the reason for them recognizing him so quickly was because of the widely distributed cyber ‘Wanted’ notices being spread around by minions of Thanos kicked that confusion in the ass and replaced it with truly massive amounts of dread tinged with hysteria. He’d laughed in their faces and punched the nearest one to him before they could recover from his odd reaction. The resulting scuffle had been quick but painful. He was at least a good foot and a half shorter than all of the others. His hand-to-hand skills had vastly improved since the beginning of his space journey, but he was far better with the large blade he had strapped to his back. They gave him no opportunities to grab for it and he was tired. Tired from days of nothing but running and looking and failing and trying to achieve the impossible.

With no other choice but to try and get away, he made a run for it. He’d taken off toward the ship he’d stowed away on for the past couple weeks without any idea what to do other than _get the hell AWAY_. It might have worked had the planet they’d been on not been desert-like, and the space between his new captors’ ambush point and the ship had anything other than dirt and more dirt. With no cover and multiple injuries, he didn’t stand a chance. The shot to his shoulder was only surprising because he’d been expecting one in a more critical spot.

But Thanos most likely wanted him alive. That happy thought had carried him in to unconsciousness. 

The guard on his left readjusting his hold brought Tony back to the present. Right, movement, from point _who knows_ to point _who cares_. His nose was bloody and likely broken from the fight earlier, so that made him two senses down. The ground felt relatively smooth underneath his dragging feet, so they were probably indoors somewhere. He wasn’t sure where because when he’d first landed on this planet, he hadn’t seen more than a dingy little outpost and what looked like a few small clusters of houses. Tatooine was real, or at least something like it was. He’d have given anything to see someone who looked human, even if it was a fictional character.

But, no. All he’d gotten was a group of tall mean-eyed dark-green-colored Chitauri knockoffs.

And did he mention heavily armed?

He could hear their weapons, guns of some kind, clanging against the metal armor that covered most of their bodies. The injury to his shoulder felt less like a bullet hole and more like a burn though, so they were likely more akin to phasers. And wasn’t that weird?

Phasers were real. Not a great leap to accept that seeing as he was on an alien planet being dragged to some undisclosed location by aliens from a different alien planet.

He held back a groan, still playing at being knocked out, as they jerked to a stop. The sound of buttons being pressed and a high beeping noise preceded a rush of stale air hitting his face in the places not covered by the blindfold. He was shoved forward and dropped unceremoniously on the ground before he heard retreating footsteps and a similar rush of air, what he now recognized as the door shutting behind them.

He let himself lie there for a minute, not moving from his sprawled out position on the cool metal floor. The chilled surface felt good against his face.

Until it started vibrating. He groaned and sat up carefully, reaching behind his head with the arm connected to his uninjured shoulder to untie the cloth wrapped around his eyes. Thankfully, the room they’d placed him in wasn’t overly bright. It only took his eyes a few seconds to adjust. The holding cell he was in was nothing special, four metal walls accompanied a metal floor and ceiling. A vent in one of the corners likely filtered out air, and the small barred windows on two opposite walls undoubtedly provided views into the two neighboring cells.

The nosie of an engine starting had him worried. It sounded big.

Very big. One big enough to not only shake the floor, but the entire room and the rooms surrounding it.

He was on a ship.

He was on their ship, and it was getting ready to take off.

Shit.

“Shit.” He pocketed the cloth and scrambled toward the door, tracing his hands along the seam, searching in vain for a weak point he knew wasn’t there. There was no handle, no hinges, no keypad on this side of the door. The only way to access it was from the other side unless he had some kind of weapon or explosive with him, which he most certainly did not. They’d stripped him of everything except his clothes, even going so far as to take the sheath he kept his blade in. He turned toward the vent, but a quick examination showed it was built into the wall, not screwed in like the covers he was used to.

The sound of the ship powering up got louder and louder until it was nearly deafening. He was forced to sit down as the shaking got worse as well. Lift off was as he expected it would be. He was shoved against one of the walls with the force of take off and was only kept on the floor by the atmospheric gravity regulator kicking in.

Things quieted down a few moments later once they were out of the planets atmosphere. He unwrapped his arms from around his legs and uncurled from the position he’d taken trying to avoid injuring himself any further. Glancing around the room again, he let out a scoffing laugh. “This must be karma for not doing any of that paperwork Pepper left on my desk back in Malibu.” He stretched his legs out and let his arms drop to his sides. His head thumped against the wall when he let it fall back.

He stared up at the ceiling and really started to question why he had been trying so hard to get home when the task was clearly impossible. Space fucking sucked and he was tired.

He was just closing his eyes when a voice broke the silence in his cell.

“So you are alive.”

He froze. Not that he wasn’t already still, but his muscles tensed. Some dormant part of his brain urged him to reach for a gun, or a long gone repulsor. Another part screamed at him to yell for help, scramble away toward a corner, beat at the door.

He ignored those thoughts and slowly reopened his eyes. He made a point to move his head slowly toward the direction the voice had spoken from, a voice he really wasn’t expecting to hear. His eyes locked on the face smirking through the bars of the window.

One very irritated part of his brain whispered that he should put his fist through the opening and punch that face very squarely in the mouth. He shoved that part away as well, though rather more reluctantly than he had the others. Instead he let out another scoff-like breath and pulled himself up. He put on the best shit-eating grin he could manage and sauntered his way over to the window.

The ground wasn’t shaking any more, evidence that they had likely switched to autopilot and were either in warp or were close to it. He didn’t have a clue where they were headed but the only reasonable destination was somewhere he _did not_ want to return to. Ever. So he pushed that knowledge aside and faced the one thing in his immediate situation that he could maybe handle, or at least distract himself with until his eventual doom was actualized.

Coming to a stop a few feet away from the barred opening, he crossed his arms and tilted his head, taking in the pale face and long black hair. The green eyes were a change from the icy blue he remembered, but that made sense if his recent revelations had any merit.

“Hey, Reindeer Games. What’s a god like you doing in shit-show like this?”

Loki’s expression didn’t change, smirk staying firmly in place. But his eyes seemed to rake over Tony’s form, making him tense even further. He forced himself to relax and take a deep breath. There was no reason to be unsettled by a demi-god, one that had led an army that nearly destroyed an entire planet in half a day. No reason at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here's Loki. 
> 
> Also, I'm not well-versed in the comics, like, at all. Most of what I'm working with is either stuff I've researched online or things I'm making up.

This was definitely not the way he had expected the day to go. Getting chased down by guys with guns on a planet he didn’t know the name of was nothing. Being shoved into a tiny cell with nothing but a vent, a couple of miniscule windows, and a toilet was par for the course. Finding out he was most likely on ship headed back to Thanos was terrifying but comprehendible given the current way his life was screwing him over.

But running into Loki… For some reason, that threw him for a loop. The last time he’d seen the god had been in New York, when he’d tossed him through a window and attempted worldwide domination. Flying the nuke through the portal had shot that ‘plan’ in the head of course, or at least he’d assumed it had. All of the Chitauri on his side of the hole in the sky had burnt to a crisp, effectively destroying any back-up the ones in New York may have been hoping for. Tony had known, just as Fury probably had when he’d screamed at him over the coms, that a nuke was unpredictable when combined with an element of magic-upped pseudo-science. Setting off that kind of weapon in such an uncontrollable environment could have, and likely would have had, catastrophic results.

Tony had never trusted SHIELD, but his hate for the World Security Council, or whoever the fuck had been pulling Fury’s strings for the few years leading up to New York, was burning hot. They’d called for a nuclear strike on a populated city center with no knowledge of how the weapon would react with the power emanating from the portal device or the hole itself. He hadn’t had time to really think about it at the time, having been more concerned with directing the missile away from the INNOCENT CIVILLIANS. But he’d had time since then, more than enough hours spent trying to think of anything but what was happening around him, to him. He’d had days where Thanos’s followers had ripped him apart, bit by bit, cut by cut, cracked bone by shredded skin. He’d had days when Thanos had slid through the corridors of his mind, raking through his thoughts with no regard for anything other than finding out what made him tick.

Rogers had been right, of course. His path through the portal had been a one-way trip; he just hadn’t realized there had been destination that wasn’t death. But no, he’d somehow managed to survive a few minutes in open space only to be picked up by a ship not caught up in the explosion. He closed his eyes to the sight of burning ships and endless empty space.

He woke up to something far worse. He woke up alone in a world, a universe, he didn’t know. And it was cruel, and harsh, and bloodier than anything he, the so-called Merchant of Death, had ever seen before.

So he’d had time to think about a lot of things.

Including the figure standing across from him.

Thanos was everything Tony had never realized he feared. He was madness contained within cool powerful logic. He was power, unending power, seemingly only limited by his own will. He was _more_ than anything he’d ever seen, including the two gods he’d met shortly before his jump through the portal.

Loki was intimidating, sure. Tony would even say he was more powerful than Thor, if only because Tony valued cunning and intelligence over brute strength. Loki had brought Earth to its knees, made it scramble to fight against a power it had never encountered before. He’d made chaos with nothing but a few well-placed jabs and some wand-waving.

But something was off. Tony wasn’t an idiot; he’d brushed up on his Norse mythology when he’d realized Thor was a possibility for the Avengers Initiative. He knew stories from hundreds of years ago about beings that many humans had written off as nothing more than fairytales, much like the figures from Greek and Roman mythology, were not exactly prime sources for finding the truth. But he’d been looking more for patterns, behaviors, understandings of the gods themselves rather than the stories that may or may not have actually happened. His prediction for Thor had mostly held up, but he’d been thrown by Loki.

The bite was there, the slippery words, the tricks.

But there was no control. He was the god of chaos, but he wasn’t supposed to exhibit it. He was supposed to create it, mold it, unleash it, not be consumed by it. Loki had been erratic, his plan half-baked and only mildly successful because of the lack of resistance. SHIELD could brag about containment of the situation all they wanted, but they’d been running blind since Thor had blasted his way into the atmosphere and turned everything on its head. Phase 2 had been evidence enough for that. Containing Loki, protecting the world from threats like him and Thor had been a pipe dream without any input from a friendly Asgardian party.

Loki had nearly leveled the planet, and he wasn’t even in control of himself.

And wasn’t that an interesting point? Loki was a god, one not even other Asgardians could contain. Who had taken him over so completely that he had become the very thing he’d been known for controlling? What had slithered its way into his mind and taken hold? What had forced him to open a portal and let in an army that he was obviously not the commander of?

Thanos.

The Mad Titan had only mentioned Loki a few times, and offhandedly at that, with little more than hints at his involvement. But again, Tony wasn’t an idiot. He didn’t know what had brought Loki to Thanos, but whatever the lead up may have been, the end result was the shell of a god that had invaded Earth with icy blue eyes and madness in his head rather than his hands.

Looking at him now, Tony couldn’t help but notice the difference in the god he’d met back then and the one standing in the cell beside his. His face was hard as stone, not twitching with flickers of emotion. His hair, still long and black, was pulled back from his face, not twisting wildly around his jawline. His stance was calm, cool and controlled, even locked up in a cell as he was.

And his eyes were green, a deep vivid green that somehow looked more real on his face than that swirling icy blue ever had. This was the Loki he had been expecting back in Germany, back when things made some sort of sense and the ground under his feet was in a galaxy he knew the name of.

Loki continued staring at Tony without saying a word. Tony raised an eyebrow at him, leaning forward a little.

“So, how’d they get you? Lure you in with promises of grandeur and world domination?”

His expression didn’t so much as twitch. He was still smirking, cool as ever. Tony tried not to let it irk him too much, but he had never been one for keeping quiet.

He snorted and turned away from Loki, walking along the edges of his cell, scanning it idly but keeping his attention very firmly on the god. “Not exactly a high class place. No room for a throne, or a crowd of devoted followers. But then, you were unsuccessful in your last takeover, so maybe you’ve lowered your standards.” Tony had no way of knowing if that was true, but he’d assumed the ‘team’ had dealt with whatever soldiers were left once the portal had sealed itself shut. Loki’s presence in the cell beside his own supported the idea.

He looked over his shoulder, glancing at the god again, purposefully looking him up and down. “You’re looking better at least,” he said with a shrug, turning away again. “More in control.”

“And it seems you have yet to learn the art of silence.”

“Afraid I missed that lesson.”

“A pity.” Loki tilted his head the other way, his eyes lowered again, gaze settling somewhere over Tony’s chest. The white-blue glow from the reactor was dim through the layers of clothes he was wearing, but noticeable all the same.

Tony crossed his arms. “What are you doing here?”

Loki ignored him. “That is a curious magic. I meant to ask you before, how were you able to harness it?”

“Not magic, it’s science. What are you—?”

“Oh, it is magic, though not in the way you probably understand it.”

“I understand it just fine, and I know it’s not magic. I made it, with tools and machines, not spell work and _positive thoughts_.” Tony held up his hand, cutting off whatever the god was about to respond with. “It’s energy, it’s power. It’s something that ‘magic’ has difficulty working against, as you demonstrated back in my tower.” He said the last bit with a quirk of his lips. “If you’re done deflecting, maybe we could get back to the immediate threat we both seem to be facing?”

Loki scoffed, finally looking away from Tony to roll his eyes in annoyance. “I wouldn’t call this situation threatening.”

“And yet here you are. Locked up in a cell on a ship that you aren’t in charge of.”

“What makes you think I’m not exactly where I want to be?”

Tony raised both of his eyebrows this time. “You don’t strike me as someone who relinquishes control this easily. Unless the choice is taken away from you.” He looked over the god’s form again, focusing particularly on his arms and legs. He found what he was looking for wrapped around Loki’s left wrist. A dark gray band, fit snugly against his skin and easily mistaken for a bracelet instead of a shackle. It was mostly concealed by Loki’s long sleeve, but Tony could just make out a few symbols etched into the surface.

“Is that an Asgardian language? It looks similar to the markings on Thor’s hammer.”

Loki sneered and seemed to unconsciously shift his arm so that the sleeve would fall down to cover the band completely.

Tony didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “So did you escape from your Asgardian jail cell? I know they wouldn’t have been able to contain you in an Earth one, no matter how much SHIELD probably wanted to. Did you talk your way into a shorter sentence? Or did they just let you go, but slapped that your wrist as a form of magic probation?”

“Do you ever stop talking?”

“Not unless I’m forced. And sometimes not even then.”

Loki closed his eyes and let out a sigh, obviously trying to rein in his exasperation. Tony just grinned, pleased he’d finally gotten a reaction out of him, if not any sort of answer. He hadn’t truly been expecting one, but riling up the god when there was no possibility of painful retribution was mildly enjoyable. Hell, he hadn’t even regretted pissing him off even when it got him thrown out a window.

“Can you at least tell me who are lovely captors are? Only a few of them were wearing translators and I’m a bit rusty when it comes to Droxian languages.”

Loki looked at him skeptically. “You’ve learned their words?”

Tony shrugged nonchalantly. “I had to pick up a new hobby. My newest suit is probably sitting in some dusty closet half a galaxy away, and the rest of them are back in my lab on Earth. Alien mechanics is great and all, but it’s kind of a bitch when you can’t pronounce, let alone understand, the parts you’re working with.” He traced his fingers along the bars across the window separating them, finding the seam where it was welded together with the frame. “Less of a hobby, I guess, and more of a necessity. I’m pretty crap at speaking in any of them, but I can scrape by when scrap metal and ship parts are part of the conversation. I lost my translator a few planets back.” More like it had been crushed in a fight with a very annoying dock manager who thought Tony could be swindled just because he was squishy and small. They’d both left the ‘conversation’ frustrated, Tony with a broken device and the dock guy with a few broken bones and a far smaller payment than he’d been expecting. “I’ve been making do.”

“Oh yes, you’re doing very well for yourself.” Loki looked pointedly around Tony’s cell. “What was that about grandeur?”

Tony ignored him and pressed on. “I thought they were Skrulls at first, but they don’t look quite right. I know Skrulls can shape shift, so technically they could look like anything but these guys just don’t look… They look similar to what Skrulls look like naturally but not exactly. What’s the point in shifting if you’re not going to change that much? If they are Skrulls and trying to _not_ look like Skrulls, they’re doing a shit job.”

Loki didn’t respond but it looked like he was thinking on the subject more than outright ignoring him. Tony didn’t really care either way what race of alien he was dealing with, or where they came from. He was more interested in what they wanted with Loki. He knew they wanted Tony for the money Thanos was likely to give for delivering him on a platter. But as far as he knew, Thanos wasn’t actively looking for Loki anymore. Unless something had changed.

The personal questioning hadn’t gotten him anywhere though, so he continued his current line of conversation. “Maybe they’re some offshoot of the Skrulls? Some isolated line from a different system? But I didn’t think that could happen with that whole ‘stagnant evolution’ thing they have going on.”

“It can’t.” Loki was gazing at some point above Tony’s left shoulder, still standing eerily still, but at least talking with him now instead of around him. “The way their biology functions makes it impossible for them to evolve naturally.”

Tony waited for him to continue but he stayed silent. “So it wasn’t a natural evolution. It was a forced one, an engineered one.” That made some sort of sense. Even Earth had its share of expedited evolution. It was safe to say that Rogers and the Hulk would not have come across their biological enhancements the natural way.

And maybe that answered his next question, but he voiced it anyway. “For what purpose? Did they do it to themselves?”

“They were certainly pleased with the outcome.” Loki was looking at him again, more focused this time, possibly taking him more seriously than before. “You already know why it was done. Why would anyone change themselves, alter their anatomy so distinctly?” The sneer was back, but Tony got the feeling it wasn’t directed at him.

“To hide.” Loki scoffed and turned away, but Tony kept going. “To hide imperfection. To be better.” He thought of Howard, pouring over maps and notes and formulas, searching for Captain America, but also trying to figure out how Erskine managed to do what he did. He thought of Bruce, of his research that Tony’d devoured when it was initially published and revisited again that night before the invasion. That desperate search for something lost long ago. “To be perfect.”

“Perfection is relative.”

“Not when you don’t know what it looks like.” Tony had never actively sought out perfection, it left no room for improvement. And improving things, fixing them, that was kind of what he did. Sure he liked things that were amazing and great and beautiful. He always made, or had, the best. But perfect meant there was nothing else to change. “But no, it’s not perfection they were after.”

He thought about Rogers, about the timing. It had always bugged him that Erskine had figured out the solution right when they’d needed it, right as the war needed it. He thought about the old posters, with Captain America’s smiling face, encouraging people to support the effort, telling them to fight. He thought of old videos of Rogers with the Howling Commandos, all of them decked out in uniforms and guns with dog tags around their necks.

He thought of the footage Coulson had given him of Bruce, of the Hulk and the Abomination tearing through the streets, with nothing to stop them.

He thought of the Chitauri.

“They were made to be dangerous.” Tony was the one to turn away this time. He looked absently at the door he had no hope of opening. “Stronger, powerful.”

“You’re still missing the—”

“Are they at war? The Skrulls, I mean.” Tony rifled through his pockets, coming across nothing but dirt and the cloth he’d stuffed in there earlier. He eyed his jagged fingernails, bitten down and too short. He needed something longer, thinner. He wanted the bag of tools he’d left on the other ship, thinking he’d be able to go back for them, but that wasn’t possible.

He could only work with one impossibility at a time.

“They’re always colonizing new planets.”

“I didn’t ask if they were expanding their empire. Are they actively fighting with some other army?” His captors had taken most of his stuff, every weapon they could find, including the tiny knife he’d strapped to his calf. Even the holster was gone. But they’d left him his clothes.

Lucky him. He felt along he hem of his shirt and breathed out a sigh of relief when he found the thin piece of metal he’d hidden there. It was like something out of a shitty spy movie but Tony really didn’t care. The trick was damn useful when it counted. He hadn’t resorted to hiding bits of scrap metal in his clothes since before Afghanistan, before the armor had become readily available and his abductions had sharply decreased. He’d started it up again after one memorable encounter with another group of Skrulls that could have been largely avoided if he’d been able to pick the lock on his cuffs rather than dislocate his thumb in order to slip out of them. After the explosions had died down and he’d snuck away on a freighter going who knows where, he’d bandaged his hand, cursed his lack of preparedness, and started meticulously inserting bits of metal into every piece of clothing he’d managed to hang on to.

Sliding the thin rod free of his shirt, he walked over to the door again. The ship they were on was old. He could tell by the way it was designed; it was an older model of the freighters being used in the galaxy they were in now. This model had been decommissioned ages ago in favor of newer models that were more lightweight and easier to load and unload. Most of these had been reworked into transport vessels for long-term travel or had been scrapped completely. The parts would get whoever was selling quite a bit just because of the sturdiness, the reliability of the materials. These older ships may not have been as functional as they could have been, but they hardly ever broke entirely. Whenever he’d had to change ships, follow some tiny lead he’d managed to wrangle from some scrap of information, he’d always tried to find an older model ship to hitch a ride on. It helped that they were less stringent on keeping track of their passenger manifests as well.

The space between the door and the wall was tiny. With the hinge on the other side, the two pieces of metal were meant to sit flush against each other. But they didn’t, not quite.

Because this ship had been modified. This cell had originally been a storeroom, not a containment cell. The slight difference in color between the door and the wall confirmed his suspicion that the door was a newer installation, not a part of the original configuration. It was a smart move to change it, to reinforce and rework it so that it was better for holding something that might try and escape. It had likely served its purpose thus far; Tony could see evidence of other prisoners that had been in the room: scratches along the door, dents in the walls. Unsuccessful attempts at escape or the release of pent up frustration. These bounty hunters were good; he had no doubt about that.

But they hadn’t met him.

They hadn’t met Tony Stark.

And if he was good at anything, it was making the impossible happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are cool, leave one if you have a minute.


End file.
